Highlander's Beloved 02 - A Highlander's Passion

by Vonnie Davis

  To stepmothers everywhere who take other women’s children into their hearts. In our family, we have our beloved Christina. Thank you, Tina, for all you’ve done for Ryan.

  For my friend and advisor with Scottish roots, Airam Author. Thank you for all your answers to my many questions.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 1

  Kenzie Denune pedaled the bicycle harder, her thighs burning from the exertion. Thanks to a car that refused to start, she was going to be late fer her job interview at Iverson Loch Manor. Grunting and pounding from the shrubs ahead, near the road’s edge, snagged her attention.

  Naked shoulders glistened in the afternoon sun. Back muscles bulged and undulated with every thrust. “Bloody hell. Come fer me. Come.”

  In all of Mathe Bay in the Scottish Highlands, only one deep masculine voice had the power to raise the hair on her arms like this. A man with braided russet-colored hair that brushed broad shoulders inked with a bear’s claw marks, woven into an intricate tribal design—Bryce Matheson. Damn him to hell. Who’s he shagging in broad daylight? Out in the open, no less. Has he no shame?

  Not that she cared one Scottish whit, for she didna. Not after he’d cast her aside over a year ago to wallow in the memories of the wife he’d lost years earlier from complications in childbirth. Och, the man could romance a woman fer some physical release, he just couldna move forward and commit.

  Kenzie snapped her eyes from the randy spectacle and forced them straight ahead. She struggled to keep control of her bike’s handlebars on the pitted rocky lane. The old bike bounced along and her arse was airborne more often than on the narrow seat. Her jaws jarred together and she bit her tongue.

  “I canna keep pounding at ye like this all bloody day. Me back is about to give out.”

  Bryce moaned and groaned again, obviously in the throes of ecstasy. The bear-shifting bastard. She eased up on the brakes to whiz past his love nest of bushes and brambles.

  “I’ll not give up until I get ye wild cherry. Let me push both me thumbs and most of me fingers in here and…” My God, what’s he doing to her?

  Kenzie couldna resist one fleeting glance over her shoulder. Her front wheel plunged into a pothole and the bike pitched to the side before the back wheel skidded across loose gravel. Despite her frantic efforts to maintain control, she lost her leverage. Her hip smacked the dirt, and air whooshed from her lungs on a groan. Stones scraped her legs and arms as she toppled across the grit. The force of the impact, combined with the slant of the narrow road, caused her to roll toward Bryce and his current conquest. No! No, God, no!

  The last thing she wanted was to interrupt Bryce’s deflowering of some virginal maiden. With his excess dose of arrogance, he’d claim she’d done it on purpose.

  The broken branch of a tree tore the short sleeve of her white blouse. Something sharp caught her favorite purple skirt, the sound of gauze ripping just as she collided with a solid warm body. Oomph!

  They rolled downhill fer a couple of revolutions, a flurry of arms and legs. Bryce landed on top and yanked out his earbuds, his chocolate eyes wide in shock. “Kenzie? What the bloody hell?” He pushed up on his forearms, his hands beside her shoulders and his bulging biceps nearly blocking out the sunlight.

  She swiped strands of hair out of her eyes and presented him with a scowl. “I fell off me bike.” As if she needed to give him any kind of explanation. To keep from saying anything else equally as stupid, she bit her lower lip.

  He glanced over his shoulder and then aimed dark eyes on her. “Yer bike? Where’s yer car?”

  “It wouldna start. I have a job interview with the American this afternoon.” She closed her eyes in resignation. “I’ll be late. She willna hire me now.” Damn, she wanted to cry. She refused to give in to the momentary weakness and blinked to force back the tears. The job as Effie Munro’s personal assistant came with a suite of rooms as part of the package. Kenzie wanted, needed to move out of the apartment she’d shared with her late husband, Duncan. Was a fresh start too much to expect?

  Bryce leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek, as if he had the right. “Effie has it in her head to hire ye. She willna care ye are late. Why do ye think I’m out here working to clear the road?”

  “Working?” Since when was shagging some poor girl by the roadside considered working? She glanced around. Just where was his momentary love interest?

  “Aye. The old wild cherry tree was zapped by lightning in that big storm yesterday and fell across the road.”

  The storm, heralding the month of June, had been a temper tantrum of the forces of nature, raging fer hours. Had he been talking to a wild cherry and not some girl about her cherry?

  Bryce fingered her hair, bringing a strand to his nose to inhale its scent. Memories of his doing this verra same thing invaded her heart, squeezing their way in where they werena wanted.

  “Tom Weston, the gardener, is on vacation and Hamish, the butler, is clearing the storm’s debris from the lower part of the driveway. So Effie called, asking fer me help. I’ve been working fer hours, first to clear the road and now to dig up these thick roots so I can plant another in its place.” His dark eyebrows dipped into a V. “Are ye hurt anywhere? Ye took quite a tumble.” His head cocked to the side. “Ye look tired, luv. Havena ye been sleeping well?”

  “No. I’m fine. And dinna call me ‘luv.’ ”

  His eyes twinkled with humor in that damnable way they had. Although Bryce kept talking, his hands slowly roamed over her body, eliciting sensations she had no business enjoying. “Ye study plants, luv. Ye ken how rare the wild cherry tree is in the Highlands. I’d like Effie to enjoy its blossoms in May.” He kissed her beneath her ear and a shudder pirouetted through her body. “Would give me great pleasure to see her enjoy the chaste beauty of its dainty white blossoms.” He shifted to kiss beneath her other ear, his closely cropped beard causing more shivers to dance along her skin. “I’m thinking Hamish and I will plant a sea of bluebells and shy primroses around the trunk to charm the American.”

  Much as she hated to admit it, the man’s weight on her and the flexing of his muscles fetched some verra sweet and sexy memories. Dinna be weak, Kenzie. Show him he means nothing to ye.

  She slapped her palms against his sweaty chest to push him off. “If yer thinking of charming me with kisses and sweet talking, yer wasting yer breath. Now let me up. I need to check me bike. See if I can ride it the rest of the way.” Her fingers eased across the inked designs on his warm skin. When did he get these tattoos on his pecs? Dinna look at his chest. His face. Look at his face, Kenzie, for God’s sake!

  His hands covered her breasts and one of his disarming sexy smiles spread, showcasing snowy white teeth, the front two overlapping halfway down, adding a boyish allure to an otherwise perfect face. Why did he have to be the one to make her yearn, the one she dreamed of in the night, and fanaticized over during the day? Why him?

  “Get off me, ye worthless excuse for a man.” His erection poked her abdomen and angered her all the more. How d
are he? “Are ye naked beneath yer kilt?”

  His dimples winked when he flashed a sexy-as-hell smile. “Ye ken I am. Ye, above all, ken how I dress and undress, me bonnie blue-eyed and brown-eyed woman.” He bit her lower lip, sucked on it fer a few intense seconds, and sighed before he rolled over. “Get up, then. I’ll see ye get to the American’s house. Me truck is up ahead.”

  Mad as a hornet, she stood and brushed leaves and grass off her clothes before she marched up the hill to her bike. “No thanks. I’d sooner ride with the devil hisself as to get in a vehicle with the likes of ye, Bryce Matheson.” Ye and that massive hard-on ye just had pressed to me.

  “Kenzie Denune, the mere sight of ye still sets me heart to tripping. As soon as yer through mourning Duncan, I mean to woo ye.”

  Nothing the clod might have said could have angered her more. When she’d handed him her heart fourteen months ago, he’d backed away, claiming his deep love for his deceased wife kept him from caring the way he should. He’d tried softening the blow by telling her she deserved more. As if she were a bampot who would fall fer such foolish nonsense. Now that she was in mourning herself, he was chomping at the bit fer her to forge ahead with her life. Well, she was moving on and her journey didna include him as a traveling partner.

  “Dinna hold yer breath waiting. A man only gets one chance with me and ye threw yers away.”

  “Surely a good-hearted woman such as ye can see when a man is sorry fer the terrible mistake he’s made and grant him another go.”

  She ground her back molars in irritation. The man always had to get in the last word. He’d been that way since they were constant playmates as children. Well, she’d changed these last few months. Today was her day to get in the last word, even if she couldna stop walking away to gaze at him. Nay, she’d lose her train of thought if she looked at him. “Aye, I’ll give ye a go.” She raised an offensive finger over her head. “Go straight to hell!”

  To her surprise and anger, the bampot laughed at her. He just lay in the tall grass and laughed.

  The frame of the decrepit bike was too bent to ride. If she’d had the energy, she’d have kicked it down the hill in frustration. With her lungs still weakened from giving too much of herself to a little boy last night, running was out of the question. Instead, she jogged the rest of the way to the three-story stone house everyone in the area simply referred to as Iverson Loch.

  On her hurried approach, she took in the beauty of the manor, with its four turrets and an attached four-car garage. About a hundred feet beyond, the dark waters of a small loch rippled in the hot breeze. Although rimmed by trees and pines on the far side of the lake, facing the house, well-tended flowerbeds and benches added to the estate’s beauty.

  Kenzie stopped and leaned over, her trembling hands on her wobbly thighs as she struggled to breathe, a stitch in her side causing her pain. Gasping fer air, she gazed longingly at the seats in the gazebo that occupied a flat area between the dwelling and the loch’s rocky banks. There a small dock extended. A rowboat bobbed against its moorings. The humidity was so high, the waters of the loch were a silent invitation fer her to jump in—and to sink like a stone, fer she was too exhausted to swim.

  Her inhaling less labored, she finished her trek toward the house. She leaned against the frame of the front door, still struggling to even out her breathing as she pounded the brass knocker. Isobel Erskine, the housekeeper, jerked opened the door and gave her a scathing look. “Is this any way to present yerself, Kenzie? To be late and disheveled?”

  In the twenty years she’d kent Isobel, not once had she ever seen her smile. Instead, the housekeeper’s lips were perpetually pursed as if she’d just sucked a lemon dry.

  “Isobel. Let our Kenzie in.” A soft, authoritative voice floated along the pink butterfly-papered walls to both verbally embrace Kenzie in welcome and cause Isobel to sigh and roll her eyes. “Bryce just called to tell me she had a terrible fall on her way here.” A diminutive woman with curly pink hair and dressed in a pink capri set shuffled to the door in pink pelican baffies. Mercy, what the town’s people whispered about her was right. The old woman was different.

  The American extended her hands in welcome. “Kenzie, dear, are you hurt? Bryce was rather concerned.” She took Kenzie’s hands and inspected them. “Isobel, run and get the first aid kit. Her hands and arms are all scraped.” Her gaze dropped. “Her knees and legs too. Bring a bowl of warm, soapy water and a clean washcloth.”

  Isobel bobbed a quick curtsy. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Munro extended a finger in the air. “Have Mary Kate make us some of her excellent chamomile tea. Tell her to brew it strong. Kenzie needs a potent cup to both soothe and revive. We’ll have it in the solarium while I tend to Kenzie’s boo-boos.”

  The housekeeper rolled her eyes again and clumped off.

  The American leaned in, the faint smell of baby powder growing stronger, and whispered in a conspiratorial manner. “The woman doesn’t like me. I hope you’ll come to accept my idiosyncrasies. We all have them, don’t you think?” She wrapped a skinny, wrinkled arm around Kenzie’s waist and led her back to a hallway. “I could use an ally. A friend. I have my granddaughter, of course, but with her pregnancy she has herself to think of right now.”

  Someone ripped the scab off Kenzie’s heart. “I didna ken Paisley was pregnant.” I’d be in me eighth month by now.

  Mrs. Munro had traveled from Virginia to attend her uncle Angus Iverson’s funeral last winter. She’d brought her grown granddaughter Paisley along as her traveling companion and the two had stayed at Matheson Lodge. Gossip was that Creighton—eldest of the Matheson brothers, laird of his clan, and bear-shifting sleuth—had no sooner set eyes on golden-haired Paisley than he’d laid claim to her. They were married a couple of months later.

  Mrs. Munro led Kenzie to the welcomed coolness of the solarium, full of tan wicker furniture and palms. Ferns and begonias hung from the rafters, their leaves and fronds moving gently in the breeze created by the three ceiling fans. Nestled in two of the corners were orange trees and climbing roses in large terra-cotta pots. “This is my favorite room in the whole house.” An angel waterfall held a place of honor in another corner, tinkling and gurgling a relaxing tune. A large circular cage held two colorful birds, chirping an avian conversation.

  “I can see why, Mrs. Munro. This is a verra calming place.”

  “Yes, a good spot to center one’s soul.” She waved an open hand toward the furniture. “Sit on the love seat so I can clean your scrapes. And let’s get one thing straight before we proceed with our discussion: I insist you call me Effie.”

  Isobel entered with the first aid kit tucked under her arm, carrying a tub of soapy water. She slapped it on the table in front of Effie. “Yer tea will be ready shortly. Mary Kate has those special biscuits made as ye requested.”

  “Wonderful. Why don’t you take an early day once you’ve served the tea. You’ve worked hard enough.”

  The dark-haired housekeeper curtsied, her face pinched. “As ma’am wishes.”

  Effie waited for a few seconds and then leaned in, her wrinkled hand on Kenzie’s arm. “I swear if I gave that woman a million dollars, she’d bitch because I hadn’t given it to her yesterday. Some people just don’t know how to be happy, do they?” She wrung most of the water from the white washcloth and washed the dirt off Kenzie’s arms, hands, and legs. “I suspect you’re almost to that point yourself. Life’s dealt you some hard blows.”

  Kenzie wasna sure how to respond, for the American’s words were true. How long had it been since she’d been happy? Since the first couple weeks of her marriage to Duncan, before the abuse started. She blinked back tears and studied the rip in her favorite purple skirt. “I must look a sight. Thank ye for agreeing to interview me nonetheless.”

  “Oh, my little sparrow, there will be no interview today. You’ve been through enough.” Effie opened the first aid kit and fingered the contents.

  A couple
of traitorous tears escaped and Kenzie swiped them away. Seeing to the little boy last night had taken more out of her physically and emotionally than she’d expected. Tears seemed a mere heartbeat away at every turn. “I hope ye will give me another chance. I feel I could do the job quite well.”

  Effie cleaned Kenzie’s arms and hands once more with a stinging antiseptic solution. “There’s no doubt in my mind you will. How soon can you start?” She reached for a bottle of spray. “Please say tomorrow. I really do need a companion. Someone to talk to and laugh with.”

  “You’re hiring me?” Could she be so lucky?

  “I am.” Effie beamed a smile. “I have.” She continued cleaning and treating Kenzie’s skinned elbows and hands, tsking in a soothing manner as she ministered. “A hot bath will do wonders for these injuries, I think. I call my granddaughter Sweet Pea. May I call you Sparrow? I’m rather fond of nicknames.” She sprayed stinging stuff over the abraded skin. “Another one of my quirks, I suppose.”

  Isobel carried in a tray of tea and biscuits, setting it on the table. “Shall I pour, ma’am?”

  “No, I’ll serve my new assistant today. Tomorrow, if her hands are up to it, she can serve me. You may take the bowl of water, after you’ve wiped what you spilled. Thank you. That will be all, Isobel.” Once they were alone again, Effie poured tea. “Will your skinned knees wait while we talk over a cup of tea and some of Mary Kate’s fabulous biscuits?” She picked one up and turned it over as if inspecting it. “In the States, we call them cookies.”

  “I’d love some tea…and cookies.” Surely there’d be no harm in picking up some American terms if she were working fer someone from the United States. She accepted the cup Effie offered and relaxed fer the first time that day. Relaxed and allowed her newfound powers to surface so she could observe. While Effie’s colorful aura was clear, bright, and honest, a smoky vapor swirled low to the floor, behind her. Was this why she felt the need fer an ally? Was the auld woman in danger?

  Kenzie’s gaze drifted to Effie’s hair. How did it get pink? “Is yer hair color a family trait?”